The invention relates to a blood chamber for extracorporeal circuits and to a process for manufacturing the blood chamber.
Specifically, though not exclusively, the invention can be usefully applied in extracorporeal circuits destined to be associated to a machine for extracorporeal blood treatment, such as for example a dialysis machine.
In particular the invention relates to a blood chamber for extracorporeal circuits made according to the preamble of the first claim.
The prior art comprises blood chambers of the above-cited type, described for example in U.S. Pat. No. 5,643,205, U.S. Pat. No. 5,605,540, U.S. Pat. No. 5,520,640, U.S. Pat. No. 5,578,070, U.S. Pat. No. 5,330,425, U.S. Pat. No. 5,328,461, U.S. Pat. No. 5,061,365, U.S. Pat. No. 4,681,606.
One of the drawbacks of blood chambers, manufactured by blowing plastic materials, of known type, is that the connection of the flexible fluid transport tubes to the access ports of the chamber can, in some cases, present imperfect fluid sealing.
This is mainly connected to the fact that the connection occurs by application, on at least one of the coupling surfaces, of a solvent which, by effect of the melting of a surface layer of material, causes reciprocal adhesion of the surfaces: a connection made in this way, in order to be effective, requires that the shape and sizes of the connected coupling surfaces be very precise. This cannot however be guaranteed in the case of an access port of a blood chamber produced by blowing of plastic material, because the shape and size of the internal surface of any access port, i.e. the surface destined to be coupled with the external surface of an end zone of a flexible tube for fluid transport, can be predeterminable only within a relatively large range of values.